The fundamental truth: a baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.

The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

A story begins with this nebulous feeling that’s hard to get a hold of and you’re testing your feelings and assumptions, testing what you believe. They end up turning into keepsakes and mementos –like amber in which a memory gets trapped.

He looked so profoundly disappointed in me that I wondered for a moment if he was someone I knew.

... and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second.

Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath.

[While writing], I'll go anywhere I find that is quiet, has no internet. I have a big internet problem.